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PM tells Home Office to add mother’s information to marriage certificates in England and Wales.

I'm delighted to report that Ailsa Burkimsher Sadler, the force behind the petiton to include mother's information on English and Welsh marriage certficates, has reported a victory in her campaign.

Today the Prime Minister announced that he has instructed the Home Office to address the inequality on marriage certificates and allow mothers' name to appear alongside fathers.

Over 70,000 supporters, mobilised via change.org, succeeded in persuading the Government that mothers' names should be recorded on marriage certificates alongside fathers' names.

David Cameron said: "The content of marriage registers in England and Wales has not changed since the beginning of Queen Victoria’s reign. At the moment, they require details of the couples’ fathers, but not their mothers. This clearly doesn’t reflect modern Britain - and it’s high time the system was updated. So I have asked the Home Office to look at how we can address this too."

The Society of Genealogists has been delighted to support this campaign and has been critical of the Home Office suggestion that such amendments might be rather expensive to introduce. The Home Office was certainly rather slow to answer exactly what they think the costs might actually be. The push for change results from equality issues rather than from a genealogical standpoint but will benefit family historians if they record as full information that might be found on a child’s birth certificate.

We'll of course be keeping an eye to make sure the Home Office follow the Prime Minister's instruction and speedily make this change.

Along with Ailsa a we would like to thank you for all your support - we did it!